Abhishek Avtans अभिषेक अवतंस

Pramod Pandey - Profile on Academia.edu A Brief Personal Biography I was born in a suburb of Varanasi in the direction of Sarnath, U. P., India. At the age of 8, I…

In 2007, Prof. Pandey published his path-breaking book Indic Scripts: Palaeographic and Linguistic Perspectives. In 2014, his magnum opus, Sounds and Their Patterns in Indic Languages, was published by Cambridge University Press.
jnu.academia.edu/PramodPandey

In 1985 he took his Ph. D. degree in Linguistics from Deccan College, Pune, under the supervision of Dr. Ashok R. Kelkar. He wrote several research papers on phonetics and phonology of Indian languages. He went on to become the vice chancellor of Deccan college (Pune) in 2021.

Prof. Pandey was born in Varanasi and later completed his school education in Dibrugarh, Assam. He graduated from Fergusson College in 1973 & completed his postgraduate studies at Pune University, Deccan College, & CIEFL (Hyderabad).

Hard to believe that we exchanged emails just a few months ago. He mentioned Dr. Ashish Jain at Max Hospital, Saket (Delhi), who knew me from Twitter, and when he told Prof. Pandey my name, he immediately said that Abhishek was his student from JNU. 😢

Deeply saddened to hear of the demise of Prof. Pramod Pandey, a towering figure in Indian linguistics and former Professor at JNU. Soft-spoken, kind-hearted, and ever willing to help, he was my go-to mentor for advice. A true gentleman. Om Shanti🙏🙏.

ज्ञ jña in Indian langauges The story of ज्ञ jñā in Indian languages

Fresh:
I wrote this piece where I try to untangle all the knots around the pronunciations of ज्ञ /ಜ್ಞ / জ্ঞ / જ્ઞ / jña in Indian languages. Comments awaited!
wp.me/pSoc-2jF

Happy new year. Read this Hindi poem by Priti Shri (1941)

Saddened by the passing of former professor of Hindi language Dr. Mohan Gautam (1937 – 2025), who left us in August 2025🙏📿🌺. A distinguished scholar and beloved educator at Leiden University. Dr. Gautam made profound contributions to the study of Hindi language and diaspora studies.

He wrote several books on Sarnami Hindustani. His grammar (in Dutch) of Sarnami is a seminal contribution to the documentation of Caribbean Hindustani (Sarnami Hindi). Sarnami Byākaraṇ (1985) remains a foundational work in the field. 3/3

YouTube video by Leerstoel LallaRookh De laatste Kantraki

He was the interviewer & editor of the beautiful documentary De laatste Kantraki (1988). In this documentary the longest living Indian indentured labourer of Suriname, Ramlali Awadhbihari (104 years old), talks in Awadhi about how she's kidnapped from her village in UP. 2/3
youtu.be/0Fu66lF9V4c?...

Saddened to hear of the passing of the legendary Surinamese-Indian linguist, author, farmer, musician, & polymath Mr. Moti Marhé (1943 – 5 Dec 2025). He touched the hearts of all who met him with his kind & friendly nature. He welcomed people into his home & into his heart.🙏🕉️1/3

How caste pervades Southasian languages How caste pervades Southasian languages

"Caste identity is made audible even in routine daily interactions. Language also acts as a marker of social aspiration and mobility," Abhishek Avtans अभिषेक अवतंस writes about #caste and #language in #Southasia
https://www.himalmag.com/politics/language-caste-india-hindi-tamil-kannada

Cyclone named "Ditwah" ravaging the island nation of Sri Lanka is a Soqotri language word. Soqotri is a southern Semitic language spoken by the Soqotri people on the Socotra archipelago by more than 111,000 speakers. In Soqotri, Ditwah (di-ṭaḥḥ) means 'shore' NOT lagoon.

सोवियत संघ soviyat sangh (Soviet Union).
Soviet совет is a Russian equivalent of what we have in Hindi panchayat पंचायत pañcāyat (a village council).

तुषार tuṣār (frost, snow, ice)
A Kumaoni idiom: तुषारै की कड़कड़ घामा औण तक। झुठै की कड़कड़ सांचा औण तक। The frost crackles until the sun comes, and the lie crackles until the truth is revealed.

Why you will never marry!
(Source: Lone Fox Dancing - an autobiography, Ruskin Bond, 2017)

Herbertpur A small town in history

Herbertpur derives its name from Lieutenant-General Sir Herbert Taylor Macpherson (1827–1886), a decorated British military officer of Scottish descent, who later became Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army.
avtans.com/2025/12/02/h...

Bhāī भाई fulfills the same function of "cool solidarity" with following senses:
👊Greeting ("What's up?")
👊Exclamation (that's awesome!")
👊Confrontational stance attenuator (softening a disagreement)
👊Discourse structure marking
👊Affiliation/connection
👊Agreement or sympathy

This allows male speakers to be close to other men without the interaction being perceived as potentially homosexual, which helped maintain cultural norms of heterosexuality and non-conformity. In Indian context, we can think of the usage of word bhāī (lit. brother) in Hindi.

Cool solidarity
In 2004, American sociolinguist Scott Kiesling proposed the concept of "cool Solidarity". According to which, "dude" in American English helped young men navigate social pressures by expressing "cool solidarity", a non-intimate form of affiliation or connection.

Screenshot of the website himalmag.com

I grew up noticing differences in languages depending on one's caste (or community), but prescriptivists often brushed them aside as aberrant speech. Here is what I’ve written about the state of these linguistic differences in India and beyond.
www.himalmag.com/politics/lan...

Translating a pandemic: The impact of COVID-19 terminology on Southasian languages This article is part of Dialectical, a Himal series that explores Southasia’s languages, their connections and shared histories. ***A lot has changed since the

Thanks to our robust vaccination programs, we have eradicated this deadly disease. Some years ago, I wrote a short essay for Himal on words from Indian languages describing vaccination, pandemic, quarantine etc.
www.himalmag.com/culture/dial...

I also learned that the word Hindi/Urdu चेचक chechak is derived from the Turkish 🇹🇷 word çiçek which originally meant flower, and later came to denote smallpox because of the red blisters it caused on the skin.

While watching the series 1883, I realized how short is our collective memory. In those times, there was the epidemic of smallpox, which is called चेचक, शीतला & बड़ी माता chēchak śītlā & baṛī mātā in Hindi. It was a deadly disease devastating many families and communties.

Tāk/Tāq in Hindi/Urdu originally meant a recess, niche, a ledge or shelf on a wall. In Arabic & Persian tāq ताक़ means an arch or recess. Arabic tāq (arch) was re-borrowed by Persian, which brought it to Indian languages. Arabic had earlier borrowed tāg (arch) from Middle Persian

Tāq /tāk ताक़/ताक
Hindi has preserved this Arabic origin word in a common idiom niyamon ko tāk pe rakhnā नियमों को ताक पर रखना (to disregard the rules). So something kept on tāk is kind of left unattended or ignored.

In Yoga this posture is known as sukhāsana सुखासन (easy pose).

It is one of the most popular sitting style in India while having food on the ground level (non table settings). In Urdu pālthi is called चार ज़ानू बैठना chār zānū baiṭhnā. In Marathi it is called मांडी घालून बसणे māṇḍī ghālūn basṇe (māṇḍī means thighs).

Sitting cross-legged on one’s thighs is called pālathī पालथी in Hindi. This word traces its origin in Sanskrit paryastikā पर्यस्तिका (sitting upon the hams). In Hindi the usual verbs attached with pālthī are mārnā मारना (to strike) and bāndhnā बाँधना (to tie).

Interestingly, our body even has a muscle named after this posture, the sartorius muscle, running along the length of the thigh. Its name comes from the Latin sartor, meaning “tailor,” which is why it’s often called the “tailor’s muscle.”